In the great battle that is the culture war Christians are in rapid and chaotic retreat. On issues of sexuality we are deemed backward, hateful and hypocritical. To speak in defense of marriage is, in the minds of the world, on par at best with denying the holocaust, at worst with perpetrating it. We have not just lost our place at the table, but in the building. We are on the outside looking in.
First, accept it. I’m not suggesting surrender mind you. I am, however, suggesting that denying the obvious helps no one. Sure Fox wallops MSNBC. Of course abortion mills are shutting down. But the cultural ethos is still hostile to us, and it’s only going to get worse. I fear that too often our fear is losing privilege, that we fight our rearguard action to protect wood, hay and stubble. The reputations we too often seek to defend are our own, rather than our Lord’s.
Second, embrace it. The church historically has made its greatest gains when it was under the most pressure. Heat removes dross and we have far more dross than we ought in the body. To be purified, to be chastened by our Lord, is the very mark of what it means to be a child of God. Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 1 that it is God’s holy habit to use the weak and the despised to show forth His strength. Pounding our chests, building our strategic alliances simply encourages the One True Power to abandon us to our own devices. When we are weak, He is strong.
Third, give thanks for it. We are, of course, called to battle, to tear down strongholds, and every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ. But even our losses are victories. So He tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, reminding us that we are blessed when we are persecuted for His name’s sake. His blessing is the victory. What a privilege to share in His shame. It’s how we come to share in His exaltation.
Fourth, pray for our enemies. For for them, every victory is a loss. The deeper the culture falls into sin the more misery it faces. Bruce Jenner, when he received the Arthur Ashe award for courage from ESPN was in deeper despair than he was when he first saw two-faced surgery as the solution to his ills. Those who have been given over to their own dark desires may march in the streets to demonstrate their pride, when the truth is they are consumed by shame. Pity, rather than hatred, ought to be what motivates our prophetic call to repentance.
Finally, pray for each other. The deepest danger of cultural decline isn’t the self-destruction of goats who love death but the temptations that come to the sheep. Our children are being raised in a world without the blessing of social taboo, in a culture that has lost the ability to blush. And we face the temptation to walk the wide path of destruction, protecting our standing by betraying Him. Jesus prayed for Peter. Let us pray for one another.
Jesus is on His throne, bringing His purposes to pass. And we are seated with Him in the heavenly places. We are kings and queens dressed in beggars’ clothes. May we have the eyes of faith to see it.
Some years ago I had a refreshing, encouraging conversation on a podcast, with a well known blogging friend on the subject of writing. One of the things covered in that conversation was dealing with criticism. The irony is that each of us has at one time or another criticized, or at least critiqued the other. My friend is quite clear on his conviction that public schools are a viable option for Christian parents. I’ve been quite clear over the years that I think not. Our pens, mightier than swords, have crossed. That, however, has not kept me from being blessed by, served by, taught by him and his writing.
Too often, perhaps especially among we who are Reformed, we are binary when it comes to those we are willing to learn from. We tend to be either all in, or all out. We assign a white hat or a black hat to every preacher, writer, podcaster we take in, and often, dramatically strip our heroes of their white hat when they cross us or our, or even their convictions. Now I’m not of a mind that suggests we ought to surround ourselves with bad teachers to make us stronger. I am persuaded, however, that the issue ought more to be good teaching than good teachers, or as the case may be, bad teaching rather than bad teachers.
When I was a younger man I looked upon virtually every conversation as an opportunity for battle. As a college student I regularly called my dad after class and let him know of the great victories I had imagined I had won. He, being wise, cautioned me- you can learn something from all of your professors. You’ll serve yourself better being a discerning student than a tilting Quixote. Trusting the teaching of my own father, I have sought to be just that, a discerning student.
The truth is that I disagree with everyone but me. While I acknowledge that I’m not right about everything, nonetheless everything I believe I believe. I don’t believe I’m always right, but I do always believe I’m right. Thus all of my teachers are people with whom I disagree. While all of them have blessed me despite their errors, many of them have blessed me by exposing my own errors. My counsel is to learn the strengths of your teachers, and mine deep there. I don’t get my eschatology from my dispensational brothers. But many of them are quite adept at breaking down a tough passage of Scripture. I don’t look for church government insights from my Baptist brothers, but many of them are right on the money on how we have peace with God.
But the principle goes well beyond intramural debates. CS Lewis, as many scholars are all too happy to point out, didn’t fit neatly into the evangelical subculture that so admires him. But boy howdy when he’s on, he is on. Few writers I am aware of have such an insightful capacity to expose the nature of our sin, or even the glory of our Maker. GK Chesterton, another occupant of great swaths of my bookshelf was even more far afield than Lewis. But he had many of the same strengths. This doesn’t undo my convictions on either the manner of our justification, nor the inescapable importance of the doctrine, any more than reading Luther, the great champion of justification by faith alone, tempts me to become, well, a Lutheran.
We serve a God who delights to make straight lines with crooked sticks. I pray He is able to use a sinner like me, with all my errors and my warts. If He can use me to serve the kingdom, He can use anyone. May we all be faithful Bereans. May we beware a sloppy feel-good ecumenism that blurs critical distinctions. But may we learn to give thanks for all the Balaam’s asses that He speaks through even in our day. Reject error, by all means. But rejecting those who make errors means rejecting the crooked sticks our Lord uses to make straight lines.
Thesis 78- We must teach our children humility.
Scholars have debated for millennia what Paul’s thorn in his side was. While I can’t prove my theory, I’m confident I know the answer. I think it was kidney stones. When you consider what he called it and the fervency with which he prayed against it, the answer becomes clear. What is equally clear, though painful to admit, is why God chose to not take away that thorn. God said no so that Paul would remember his dependence on God.
Paul, when writing to the church at Corinth, noted that God had not called many who were wise, noble or strong (I Corinthians 1:26). I love how careful Paul is. He didn’t say “none” but “not many.” Surely Paul must have known how strong, how wise, how noble he was. Surely he must have understood how deeply the church depended on him. If he ever forgot, I’m sure the devil was there to remind him, “Look at you Paul. You really are something. Sure, you had that shameful life before your conversion. But now. I mean, come on. Writing more of the New Testament than anyone else. All those churches planted. Audiences with kings. Where would that ragtag band of losers be without you?”
The grace of God gave Paul the thorn in his side that Paul might be blessed with humility. And God, we know, gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Paul moves from grace to grace. Which is just where we ought to be leading our children. As we raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4) we should expect them to bypass much of the folly that is common to the youth outside the kingdom. When they do, however, they are likely to fall into the folly that is common to all of us inside the kingdom, pride. They, like we, can very easily end up praying “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men.”
How then do we teach them humility? First, by modeling it. Parents should be the quickest and deepest to repent. As we acknowledge our weaknesses, our failures, the ugliness of sin that remains yet with us, we remind them that we are all in the same boat together. As we rejoice in the grace of God in Christ, throwing ourselves on His mercy, we receive grace and pass it along.
Second, we don’t hesitate to show them their own sin. Somehow we have got it in our heads that if we teach our children sound theology, if we equip them with the doctrines of grace, if they embrace the biblical notion of total depravity, we will have done our job. We miss, and thus they miss this important truth- believing that men are totally depraved is easy, taking no moral courage, no self-inspection. Believing I am a sinner is a whole different matter. Reciting TULIP, however true it is, will lead to pride. Singing, “…that saved a wretch like me” should have the opposite effect.
Our children need to know that we know that neither we nor they are the heroes of the story. We are instead the villains. Only through His grace, by His Spirit, because of His Son are we redeemed, rescued, remade and adopted. Our children need to not just understand the gospel, but to feel it, from head to toe.
There are some of us still around who remember the pre-internet world. There was a time when if you wanted your thoughts to reach an audience you had to find a publisher willing to help you out. That publisher had his own reputation to guard. In addition, he had his own money on the line. This provided a significant hedge against reckless writing. The internet has ground that hedge down to the roots. Now we are all our own publishers, and our financial investment is little more than a monthly internet bill.
In the old days we chose who we’d read in large part on the basis of how trustworthy we found the publisher to be. We knew both William F. Buckley and Jann Wenner were more trustworthy than whomever the imaginative fellow was down at the Weekly World News. The publisher listed his own name and the brick and mortar address of the office. The author listed his name as well. Now we have anonymous “publishers” publishing their anonymous writings, hiding their ip addresses through proxy servers. Now mysterious and arcane mathematical calculations determine what shows up first when we search out information. How now do we know whom to trust?
We trust those who confirm our biases. Credibility is now wrapped up in who hates the people we hate and who loves the people we love. Someone going after our friends online has an attack blog. Someone going after our enemies online has a discernment ministry.
Last week someone read something I wrote that they didn’t agree with. They replied with a link to an article about one of my scandals in my past. “This you?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “why do you ask?” On the same day I had another commenter falsely accuse, no, not accuse but convict me based on something he read on an anonymous attack blog. I’d like to think the first person was acting with integrity and wanted to check for himself. I suspect, however, that his true motive was to put me in a glass dog house.
In the first instance I can confess that yes, I was guilty. In the second it’s my word against the word of my anonymous accuser. How much weight should we give to an anonymous, or pseudo-nonymous accusation? None. Less than none. But we do, if they are going after those who already don’t care for. Oh, we might pride ourselves on how judicious we are. How many times have you heard, or worse, said something like this, “Well, if he’s guilty of even ten percent of what is written here, he’s a terrible, awful, good-for-nothing so and so.”? What we should be saying is “Well, if he’s innocent of even ten percent of what is written here, his accuser is a terrible, awful, good-for-nothing so and so.”
My counsel? Why don’t we try to not only stop speaking ill of others, but stop listening to those who speak ill of others? Why don’t we look at gossip, whether spread over the backyard fence of across the world wide web as the Bible does, a destructive, vile sin-
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless (Romans 1:29-31).
The internet didn’t create this problem. It is born out of our own hearts. Which means there is only one solution- repenting and believing His Word. That is counsel you can trust, because the Author is not just true, but Truth.
